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The Duck Knight Returns
The Duck Knight Returns is a four issue comic plotted by editor Aaron Sparrow, written by Ian Brill and illustrated by James Silvani and published by Boom! Studios. Synopsis A year after the last public appearance of Darkwing Duck, the city of St. Canard is in the firm grip of the mega-corporation Quackwerks. The company controls nearly every aspect of the city, and employs the majority of its citizens. Crime has been nearly eradicated due to the crimebots, Quackwerks's robotic police force. Darkwing Duck himself, in his civilian guise of Drake Mallard, is employed in one of Quackwerks's many offices, alongside Elmo Sputterspark, the former villain known as Megavolt. Retired from crime fighting, and having had a falling out with his former partner Launchpad McQuack, Drake was forced to take on the job in order to pay the tuition for his daughter Gosalyn's private school. However, the drudgery of office work and yearning for his old superhero days has left him depressed. When Gosalyn's best friend Honker Muddlefoot is assaulted and arrested by the Crimebots for illegally downloading music, she convinces her father to once again don the Darkwing costume in order to investigate Quackwerks, and their now over zealous robots. Meanwhile, Megavolt is recruited by his former teammates Quackerjack, Bushroot and the Liquidator. Having grown frustrated with their various jobs at Quackwerks, they begin to get revenge on their former employers by destroying Quackwerks facilities and Crimebots. The team is now led by Quackerjack who appears to have slipped even further into insanity and explodes with rage whenever someone mentions Negaduck. Sneaking into Quackwerks HQ, Darkwing is unable to gain any useful information on the corporation, and is found and attacked by an army of Crimebots. Fortunately, Gosalyn had taken a bus to Duckburg in order to find Launchpad, and they arrive just in time to rescue Darkwing in their jet, the Thunderquack. While escaping, Darkwing recounts the events from a year ago that prompted his retirement. Due to Launchpad's carelessness, Darkwing's arch-foe Negaduck had discovered his civilian identity, and attacked the Mallard family at their home. On the verge of defeat from this surprise attack, he only survived due to the arrival of the Crimebots. The realization that his superhero career was threatening his family, along with the humiliation of having to be saved by the Crimebots, prompted him to give up his costumed identity. When the Thunderquack flies past Megavolt and his henchmans, they immediately give chase in their own jet, excited that their adversary has returned. An aerial battle begins between the two groups, which eventually results in them all being captured by Crimebots and taken back to Quackwerks HQ. All seven of them are restrained and brought before Quackwerks's CEO, revealed to be one of Darkwing's most dangerous foes, Taurus Bulba. While Bulba is gloating, Megavolt shorts out the restraints. All seven attack Bulba, but he quickly dispatches the Fearsome Four by dropping them down to face a demonic human resource robot. Darkwing and Launchpad get the upperhand on Bulba and his motivations for creating Quackwerks are revealed. At some point Bulba's body had been destroyed but he continued to exist as an electronic consciousness. He re-built himself in Gyro Gearloose's lab with the ability to control all technology except a prototype Gizmoduck suit. The fact that the suit did not register Bulba as a person due to his machine nature hurt his pride. He decided to take over everything so he could make people say every word, until someone said the password so as to make the suit his slave. The password turns out to be Keen Gear, and the suit attaches to Gosayln, making her GosmoDuck. Taurus Bulba then returns in a stronger battle body, overpowering the trio and belittling Darkwing. Darkwing causes both of them to fall from Bulba's flying base with Launchpad catching Darkwing. Refusing to be defeated again, Bulba takes control of nanite weapons he had installed in the Quackwerks building in order to destroy Saint Canard, and Darkwing along with it. Gosalyn flies down and uses her suit to discharge Bulba and seemingly destroys him. But for a moment it looks like the shock killed her too, with Darkwing sobbing that she was his strength and his superhero. She then wakes up and replies "Likewise...Dad." In the aftermath Scrooge McDuck is called in by the government to re-organize Quackwerks. The city regains its autonomy, the crimebots are decommissioned, the criminals are thrown in prison, and Launchpad is made the new CEO of Quackwerks (to Darkwing's bewilderment). Gosayln is allowed to keep the Gizmosuit but Darkwing states it's only for emergencies. While everything appears to be going well for the restored superhero, its revealed that he's being watched through a crystal ball by Negaduck and Magica De Spell. And Negaduck is not happy about Darkwing's current "happy ending." Cast Gallery Notes References * The title parodies Frank Miller's 1986 Batman comic The Dark Knight Returns. * Hannah Alaska is a pun on the 2006 fictional singer Hannah Montana. * Cover #1C is an adaption of the cover of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Dark Knight Returns from 1996.Bad Ass & Darkwing Duck at CBSI * Covers #1D and #1E are adaptions of the cover of ''The Dark Knight Returns'' #1 from 1986. * Cover #4A is an adaption of the cover of No Ducks! #1 from 1977.No Ducks! (1977) comic books at My Comic Shop Continuity * The crook-turned-Quackwerks employee with the singular fang received magnet-based superpowers from the ink in "Campaign Carnage, Part 2". * Darkwing's singing talents previously played a role in "Paraducks". Milestones * This comic marks the first appearance of Maury Thwackstein (Part 2), the Steelbeak lookalike (Part 2), the Quackwerks Corporation (Part 1), Starducks (Part 1), St. Canard School for Spirited Youngsters (Part 1), crimebots (Part 1), and crystal balls (Part 4). * This comic marks the introduction of Gyro Gearloose ( Part 4), Little Helper (Part 4), and Mouseton (Part 1) to the Darkwing Duck setting. The same is true for Huey, Dewey and Louie, not counting their appearance in the DuckTales portion of "The Legend of the Chaos God". Errors * Megavolt saw that it were vines pulling him into the van. How can he not know at least one of his old teammates is behind the abduction? And why did the other three feel the need to tie him up and blindfold him like that? What made it inconvenient to them to immediately clue their teammate in as to what was going on? * The Mallard residence looks nothing like it did in the cartoon and supplementary material in the 90s. * The workings of Darkwing's chair set were never established, but the implication always was some sort of underground tunnel system. Why, after taking the chairs to escape, do Launchpad and Gosalyn travel aboveground in plain view for Negaduck? Changes * The Darkwing Duck: The Definitively Dangerous Edition version of "The Duck Knight Returns" changes the story in the following ways: ** The line "Now all those orders I filed for chains and cowboy hats make sense! All this time I thought someone had a unique way of enjoying the weekend," in Part 2 is removed in the Darkwing Duck: The Definitively Dangerous Edition on request of Disney.Aaron Sparrow on adult humor on The Old Haunt ** The somewhat controversial line of "crappy office job" in Part 3 is adjusted to "crummy office job". Other * Prototype covers usually differ not significantly from the final version, but cover 1B is an exception. The published version has the Fearsome Five as the only recognizable villains attacking Darkwing. The prototype cover also features Steelbeak and Taurus Bulba. * "The Duck Knight Returns" was compiled into a trade paperback that was released in December 2010, three months after the fourth issue. In February of 2015, it was rewritten, partly redrawn, and republished by Joe Books as part of The Definitively Dangerous Edition. References External links * The Duck Knight Returns at I.N.D.U.C.K.S. Category:Boom! Studios